Data Scientist

Data Scientist University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) Butaro, Rwanda Description Position Title: Data scientist Reports to: Chair, Centre for Population Health Department: Centre for Population Health, University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) Location: University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), Butaro campus with occasional travel to Kigali, Rwanda Program overview The Centre for Population Health (CPH) at UGHE serves as a hub for field research, education, training, and community service to improve population health in Rwanda and beyond. Its flagship program, the Human Development and Demographic Surveillance System (HD2SS), established in rural Butaro in September 2025, functions as a primary field research platform for UGHE and external collaborators. The HD2SS generates longitudinal data on disease patterns and exposures, assesses the epidemiological and socio-demographic impacts of health conditions, and monitors trends in key human development indicators, among other outcomes. Position overview: The data scientist will be the technical lead of the Human Development and Demographic Surveillance System (HD2SS), responsible for database design, data pipeline development, and data systems maintenance. This is a broad, hands-on role requiring the ability to move between long-term development work, immediate operational needs, and research tasks. The ideal candidate has strong programming skills, experience with database design, a command of quantitative methods, and the drive to serve as the link between field operations, data processing, and research. Roles and responsibilities Data engineering and systems: Manage, modify, and expand HD2SS’ PostgreSQL relational database to meet the program’s long-term data collection needs. Oversee the extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) of survey data. This includes developing new extraction and processing scripts and running the ETL pipeline on a daily basis. Implement a technical system to track vital events (births, deaths including cause of death using verbal autopsy, migrations) and link HD2SS data with external health facility records. Support the UGHE IT team in managing secure server and regularly backing up data. Field operations and data management: Support the HD2SS research and data team in the development and field implementation of data capture tools (specifically Survey Solutions). Strengthen protocols for data cleaning, quality control, and maintenance of unique study identifiers. Regularly meet with the research team and field data collectors to address data quality issues and improve data capture system. Collaborate with the HD2SS research team, cohort manager, and external partners (e.g., research stakeholders) to establish data collection procedures. Create tools or applications for the data team to perform routine data corrections, such as merging duplicate records. Data analysis and research Contribute to data analysis for publications, grant applications, presentations, an